Salary requirements for visas will keep tech talent away Net Results Karlin Lillington

According to recent reports, the Government will require immigrant workers to earn a minimum annual salary of €55,000 to qualify for an employment permit (similar to a US green card), revealing that we are not close to Boston or Berlin in our employment policies.

Instead, we inhabit some bizarre, happy-clappy universe where we aren't facing key shortages in areas of employment - health, hospitality, or technology - that do not pay salaries of this size; where the post-2000 downturn and tech crash and subsequent decline in salaries didn't happen; where indigenous tech companies are awash with spare cash, enabling them to pay over the odds for badly-needed engineers, and where we welcome methods of triggering inflation because "Rip-Off Ireland" doesn't yet extend to enough sectors of the economy.

Nor do we seem to have coherent thinking across the Government on economic policy. Take the economically crucial science and technology sectors. On one hand, the Government says it wants high-value knowledge economy jobs in technology and science, especially in research and development (R&D).

Then, with asinine approaches to employment like this, it guarantees it will chase those jobs to other countries. American, Canadian and British technology companies will be laughing all the way to the bank (and the patent offices). How helpful of the Irish to set such high salary requirements for immigrants to guarantee the talent goes elsewhere! Ireland's loss is everyone else's gain.

I wonder where the Government got the information to base this figure on? It didn't seem to talk to anyone in the real world of science and technology. These sectors need employees badly and must increasingly get them from outside the State, as we do not produce enough home-grown graduates. Ministers have been told this by Intel and Microsoft and agencies such as Forfás.

As Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told journalists last Friday in Dublin, Ireland is virtually a full-employment economy and "talent is scarce". He also noted that Microsoft - like other companies in the sector - places its R&D centres in countries where it can find talent. Costs, said Ballmer, are less important in choosing a location than a pool of capable employees.

He also pointed out that the R&D facility Microsoft launched earlier this year has an equal mix of Irish and immigrant employees. Wake-up call! That facility is eventually supposed to more than triple in size from its current 30 employees, suggesting this country will need an intelligent, flexible immigration scheme, not the 21st-century equivalent of a moat and drawbridge.

On the academic side, the State has rightly supported organisations such as Science Foundation Ireland to expand or bring in more R&D. Yet attracting talent from abroad is difficult as it is, given the restrictions on granting tenure, and third-level institutions aren't able to up salaries. So who could the academic research sector bring in to suit that €55,000 minimum?

Certainly not postdoctoral graduates, the lifeblood of research programmes at university and corporate level. We need them from abroad as there aren't many PhD holders in the sciences here.

But these positions in the public or private sectors pay nowhere near €55,000, and what about technology jobs? A glance at a recent survey of the technology sector by recruiter Rescon shows that even senior management salaries don't necessarily reach €55,000.

Most salaries in the areas where employees are badly needed fall well under that barrier. Consider software development - a good, solid IT sector job. Out of 30 potential salaries across 10 categories and three salary ranges, only five were at or above €55,000.

Only five of 18 average systems analysts' salaries fell at or above the permit threshold. Only eight of 36 systems administrator and network engineer salaries and only three of 12 software testing or technical writing salaries reached this level. Even in specialist consultancy roles, only 15 of 27 salaries reached a minimum of €55,000.

The figures are roughly the same in telecommunications, IT sales and customer service. For most of these categories, only salaries at the highest end of the industry pay scale rose beyond €55,000. That means that small to medium companies - the heart of our technology industry - could not look beyond Irish shores for employees they badly need. That doesn't bode well for Irish companies eager to expand.

Even for multinationals, key positions at the high end of the pay scale do not hit €55,000. That means technology companies would be able to hire in very senior management from abroad, but almost none in the areas that they need. That's ludicrous.

Their only option will be to inflate salaries in our high-cost economy to get the people they need, which will require other salary levels to be raised to match them, fuelling inflation. Time to rethink, methinks.

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